Becerra - Robson "The end of the beginning"

Round 1 of this year's U.S. Championship in St.Louis was not without a few surprises, at least for me. Normally when players of such high caliber compete for a prestigious national title, the games are characterized by consistent high quality & high intensity. This particular one played on May 8th 2009 between (2672 rated) GM Julio Becerra Rivero as white & (2542 rated) IM Ray Robson as black contained all that & more.
After 24 moves each:
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 e6 6. g4 e5 7. Bb5+ Bd7 8. Bxd7+ Qxd7 9. Nf5 h5 10. gxh5 Nxh5 11. Be3 Na6 12. Qf3 g6 13. Ng3 Nc7 14. O-O-O b6 15. Kb1 O-O-O 16. Rd2 Nf4 17. h4 Bh6 18. h5 Nxh5 19. Nxh5 gxh5 20. Rxh5 Bxe3 21. fxe3 Rxh5 22. Qxh5 Qe6 23. Qf3 Rh8 24. b3 Rh3,
the following position was reached with white to move:



Position after 24...Rh3 (White to move)

How should (2672 rated) white proceed?
OK, I'm not a GM, so I don't know either, but GM Becerra played 25. Kb2 (Probably not what I'd have done).
This deserves another diagram:

Position after 25. Kb2 (Black to move)
It looks like black's scary rook move worked. The white king has gone hiding.
How did (2542 rated) black proceed now?










If you guessed maybe capture something, you'd be wrong!
Don't feel too bad, I guessed wrong also; I was considering ...Rxf3 but I'm not an IM either.
IM Robson played 25... Qh6. Let's see what that looks like as it seems to be getting complicated:



Position after 25... Qh6 (White to move)

So what's black is threatening now...?
White could now take the pawn on f7, but clearly the e3 pawn hangs after the white queen moves off the third rank. I don't know what's going on here, so let's see what GM Julio (2672) actually did...






26. Rd3! (...surprised me too. )



Position after 26. Rd3 (Black to move)

Another surprise to me, but I'm not actually playing in the US Invitational Championship, nor am I rated over 2600, so I'll have to study this more when I get some time.
Obviously white is very concerned about holding on to his e3 pawn.
Black must now find some other way to attack it since the attempted rook skewer has failed to chase the white queen away. What do you suppose IM Robson did here?











If you thought he should play 26... Qg6, you're probably at least IM strength if not actually a titled player.



Position after 26... Qg6 (white to move)

Now black realigns his queen to attack white's isolated e4 pawn.
Even though it's currently protected by the knight on c3, black can easily maneuver his knight to c5 or f6 & relocate his rook to h4 whereupon the e4 pawn will be doomed since the white rook won't be able to defend the pawn fast enough.
How did white reshuffle his pieces to defend his e4 pawn without losing his e3 pawn? (White to move. [Hint: Nope, not Qxh3+.])













27. Qd1 of course, the beginning of a deep diabolical combination.
Now black black defends his weakness on d6 by playing 27... Rh6, then play continues... 28. Rd2 Qf6 29. a4 Rg6 30. Qe1 Qg7 31. Qf1 Rg1 32. Qc4 Qf6



Position after 32... Qf6 (White to move)

Without this move (32... Qf6) white's next would not be possible.
33. Qxc7+ winning the knight & the game. Another grandmaster triumph. 1-0
I double checked the game score with MonRoi, but it seems everyone gets their game scores from the same place, so without an actual hand-written paper trail, this will probably be the historical record for this game.
That wraps up round 1 & as Winston Churchill once said "This is not the end, nor is it the beginning of the end; what it may be is the end of the beginning."

UPDATE: I guess it's not much of a spoiler now because it's on the official USChess.org website, but it looks like Hikaru Nakamura won the 2009 US Championship. Congratulations!